Don't Tell
by Poohdog
Summary: Hogwarts wasn't Hogwarts without an oddity.  For Ron and Ginny there was Loony Lovegood.  Just before them, for Bill and Charlie, there was Silent Suzy.  Oneshot.


**I don't own anything related to Harry Potter. If I did, would I really be writing fanfiction?**

There was always a Luna Lovegood type attending Hogwarts. When Bill had told Ron and Ginny as much they hadn't believed him, not at first. But it was true. Sure they weren't all the same, in fact they were rarely similar in their oddness. Yet, there was something in common about them, something about the individualism hiding a want to be accepted, a want to stand out meshing with the human desire to be with people. To Ron and Ginny there was Loony Lovegood. To Charlie and Bill, there was Silent Suzy.

On the outside she didn't stand out quite so much as the girl who would take her place as school oddity. She wore normal Hogwarts robes, never had chains of butterbeer bottles around her neck or radishes as earrings or really any jewelry at all. Her hair was thick, blonde, and usually frizzy though she did not seem to care; at most she tucked it into a low ponytail, letting the top curl away from her head as it wanted. Rarely did she meet anyone's gaze across the room. Suzanna Fenwick kept to herself, very much to herself.

For ages Charlie hadn't actually known her. He had heard of her, after all she was in Percy's year and he would mention her from time to time. It hadn't been till his final year that he connected the nearly famous name with a face.

She was walking across the Quidditch pitch, her shoes in her hand as he came out of the locker room. He was team captain, had been for the past two years, and was currently enjoying the quiet after a progressive but straining practice. The game was coming up after all and he had no reason to believe it wouldn't be thrown off by something dumb. From the midst of his thoughts he saw her, feet slipping across the dewy grass. "Hey you!" he yelled out to her. She looked over at him but didn't say a word.

"Are you a spy for Slytherin?" he asked angrily, storming toward her. She shook her head and pointed to the pin on her robes. Ravenclaw. "Oh," he said, realizing. Without a word she resumed her barefoot walk across the pitch.

"I'm sorry for accusing you of being a spy," he told her. She shrugged, looked over her shoulder and smiled at him. He understood it was alright; she wasn't mad, just walking.

"I'm just stressed out, you know?" She looked at him curiously before she stopped and fully turned around. "I'm the Gryffindor Quidditch Captain, Charlie Weasley." She nodded to say she already knew, though whether she meant she knew he was captain, or that he was Charlie Weasley, or both was a mystery to him. "My team's really young this year and that means their more prone to nerves. I mean my brothers, Fred and George, their really good Beaters and usually their real show offs but still they're only twelve and it makes them feel strange being in front of all those people, you know? And Angelica and Alicia are the same age, same problem but they don't know me as well so I can't help them as well as my brothers." The girl nodded at him to show she was listening. "Oliver's a fourth year I suppose and he doesn't have the same problem exactly and by now Jonathan knows how to play against his nerves. He's in my year but entered the Quidditch team in his fourth year instead of his second like I did. But Merlin, I've made half the team second years and their so nervous about the final- Why am I telling you all this?" he asked suddenly. She smiled and shrugged.

"I'm just nervous. It's my last match." She nodded at him as he stood in front of her, his legs shoulder width apart and his arms crossed lazily about his lower chest. "I'm not going on to play professionally. A bunch of people thing I should but I'm not going to." She raised an eyebrow at him. "I'm going to research dragons," he explained proudly. "I've always liked animals. Errol, our family owl, has always pinned me as his favorite. Used to be a family joke when I was little. I'd have to play mailman because Errol would deliver all the mail to me. He finally stopped when Ron was three and Errol was getting older, decided to just drop off the mail instead of playing games I guess. Ron's ten now," he told the girl. "Or actually, he turned eleven not too long ago." She nodded lightly at him.

"Ginny's nine," he added. "She's the youngest, the only girl. Do you have a sister?" He asked. She shook her head. "Oh. Well Bill and I taught Ginny to fly when she was three. We didn't tell anyone else because Mum would have gotten mad. She was so afraid Ginny would hurt herself. Bill's the oldest, a couple years older than me. He was head boy." The girl nodded at him. "We get along great even though we're fairly different. I think it's something about being the oldest in a large family. I think Percy kind of acts like middle-child. Technically it would be Fred or George but they've got each other. I guess maybe he gets shunted a little. But next year he'll be the oldest." Charlie snorted. "Probably a prefect. Do you know Percy?" The girl nodded at him as a breeze blew by, rustling at the ends of her robes, causing the grass to rub at her bare feet.

"Aren't your feet cold?" he asked. She shook her head. "What's your na-"

"Hey, Weasley what are you doing on the pitch? Trying to spy on us?" someone hollered angrily. He looked up and saw a dark haired girl glaring at him. The Slytherin team captain was standing there, her broom propped against her shoulder. She looked angry.

"I was just leaving!" he yelled back turning towards the girl he had been speaking to. She was gone.

He didn't see her again until after the game. They had lost, spectacularly. To start with, Oliver had given a long winded speech that had made Angelica and Alicia even more nervous. During the game, in the midst of nerves, George had swung his bat too heavily at a bludger and had hit himself in the head with the thick club halfway through the game. Alicia had been so nervous she had dropped the Quaffle within seconds every time she managed to catch it. Angelica's hands had gotten very sweaty and when a Bludger hit her she was unable to stay on her broom. Charlie had dived in an attempted to catch her when the opposing seeker went after the Snitch. By the time Angelica was safe, the game was over and Gryffindor had been flattened.

An hour after the game, when everyone else had left, Charlie came out of the locker room and headed through the grounds to the padlock where a unicorn was sitting for Professor Kettleburn's sixth year class. Sitting on the fence, her bare feet swinging, was the girl from before the match. "Hi," Charlie greeted glumly. She nodded in his direction and smiled briefly.

"We lost because of nerves," he sighed. She nodded in understanding. Most likely she had seen the match. "George is going to be okay though. Madam Pomfrey can get him fixed up in a minute. And Angelica's safe. Just stressful. My last game, you know." He leaned against the high fence, his shoulder blades just above the top rail.

"You're Suzy aren't you?" he asked her although he already knew. "You're in my brother, Percy's, grade." She nodded at him.

"They say you never talk except for spellwork," he told her. She nodded to agree that they said that.

"Is that true?" For the first time she directly met his gaze. Her eyes were a pale green.

"No," she answered and then hopped down off the fence and slowly put on her shoes before meandering toward the castle.

"Wait!" he called after her. She stopped and turned. "Are you more chatty in letters?" Slowly she shrugged and nodded.

"I want a way to keep an eye on my younger brothers next year. Not anything real direct just, you know, being aware if they're in major trouble and not sharing. Can I write you?" Again she shrugged and nodded then began back toward the castle. He hurried to keep pace with her. He told her about Romania, where he was going. She listened as he spoke, nodding along until they got to the castle doors and together, they split-up.

It was still dark out when he woke up. He tossed fitfully for a moment, trying to slide back into sleep. Normally sleep came easily; it had last night anyway even after all that had happened. But now he could not coax his eyes shut again. Quietly as possible he climbed out of bed and through the door of the tent, leaving behind his brothers, his father, and Harry Potter for a walk in the grey night. The night air rustled at the leaves of the trees as he walked by. "Lumos," he said faintly, lighting the tip of his wand. Shadows danced about in the small light. The miniature bulb caught a bright patch in the darkness of the surrounding night. It was the eye of a blonde girl.

She was sitting on her own, so near to the spot where the dark mark had shown only hours before that she might have been questioned my Ministry officials if she'd been there when the event occurred. Silently Charlie sank down beside her. He had left Hogwarts three years ago that June and in that time they had owled, first about his brothers, then about him. Through the correspondence he had learned small bits about her. She was working as a potions maker, selling potions that were tricky or time consuming to individuals or hospitals and clinics like St. Mungos. Her middle name was Margaret. In her honest opinion, frogs were far less creepy than white mice that had red or pink eyes.

Moments of actual contact had been scarce. The last time had been when he had come home for Christmas. They had met by arrangement in Hogsmeade on a day Hogwarts students were allowed to visit the village. She had hummed a song he didn't know. He asked her what it was. A light voice, hoarse at first from lack of use but then clear began to sing the words to a Christmas carol he had never learned, something about sleigh bells. In the cold air her song rose in a small mist of white, crackling against the cold. Her green eyes seemed to shimmer. He had kissed her and then pulled back sharply, apologetic. She had smiled and shrugged then looked him in the eye; she saw no reason to hold a grudge. Soon after he had left to see if he could find Ron to wish him a Happy Christmas. Suzy had gone back to school.

Now she was sitting on the ground, her legs crossed in a pretzel, her hands at her sides with her palms flat. Her eyes were staring slightly upwards as if still haunted by the snake mouthed skull that had loomed in the sky. "They were probably just drunk and decided it would be a funny joke," he assured her, half assuring himself. "Not very funny at all but-"

"It wasn't a joke that night," she said so quietly the breeze outstripped it but he caught every word as if like the song it was captured by the air in a mist. Her words were few and far between, a thing to treasure. He looked at her wondering if she would tell more. Strangely enough from her usual pattern, she continued to speak. "They found pieces of my father, the Ministry or somebody did. When my mother found out she called someone, a friend, to ask if they would come watch my brother and me early in the next morning before we woke up. She thought we were already in bed. I wasn't. I watched her drink a whole goblet full of a potion. I watched her go to a chair and seem to fall asleep. I didn't realize I'd just watched my mother die.

"They came later that night, early in the morning I guess. I fell asleep in the door of the living room." She shook in the warm night as if reliving a cold one. "The stormed into the house. They didn't take one person back then. They tried to take whole families and they'd already taken my father." Charlie realized she had changed subjects. She was talking about Death Eaters.

"I saw them and I screamed and started to run for the door or something. I'm always try to run away," she said quietly, thoughtfully. "They used a spell and chained my leg down. The harder I pulled the tighter it got until it was cutting into my skin," she said, her shaking growing more apparent. With her left hand she lifted the right side of her robes to show a scar that looked like a bad tattoo of a chain running up her right leg. Then she went on. "They started with Sammy, my little brother. I got mad. I was scared. I was hurting. I lost control completely of my magic and they turned on me." She stared more directly at the sky. "Somebody rescued us I think but it was too late for Sammy. He died within a week.

"I spent a year in St. Mungo's because I had completely lost control of my magic. I'm still not all that stable to be honest. By the time I got out the war was over but I had no recollection of my parents' deaths or my brother's. I had no recollection of anything. They had to tell me my name several times over before I submitted it to memory. I had blocked out everything, absolutely everything. There was no memory of anything from before my fifth birthday.

"They put me into a muggle adoption agency but no one wants a five year old, especially one who seemed to cause strange things to happen when she was the littlest bit angry or scared. I didn't even remember anything about the magical world so how could I explain it to them? I tried to keep out of the way and keep my feelings under control when I was juggled through foster homes. I found out the quieter I was, the more I pulled away the less likely I was to loss control. I started getting quieter and quieter. Eventually I just seemed to stop altogether.

"When I was eleven I got my letter same as anybody else. I was happy at first. It meant getting away from all the shunting through homes. But it triggered something. I started having nightmares every night, nightmares that it slowly occurred to me were memories. The last thing I remembered of the dream would be being carried away by someone, one of the people I think rescued us, and seeing that mark over the house. Then I would wake up and realize I had been screaming and crying and nobody had been able to wake me. They thought I was mentally sick. Maybe I am.

"By the time I got to Hogwarts I was terrified that someone would find out about my dreams yet at the same time I almost wanted them. It's a strange thing wanting to know your parents were real so much you're willing to watch one of them die night after night, not that I had much of a choice anyway. I went to Madam Pomfrey every night to tell her I couldn't sleep and I needed a dreamless sleep potion until I could do a silencing charm around my bed to keep other people from hearing me scream. Finally I got it well enough. Nobody ever knew. I always thought it was best not to tell them anything at all. One question always leads to another and I didn't want anyone to know about my dreams. I didn't want anyone to think I was crazy." She stopped talking and drew her legs up to her chest, clutching around them with her arms. Charlie didn't know quite what to say but he scooted closer to her. He realized there were tears in her eyes as she stared upwards.

"Don't tell," she whispered quietly. He wanted to tell her she was wrong. It seemed to him that people would only want to help her. But he nodded to agree and then scooted nearer still so that his side rested against hers. He slid and arm around her waist and she stopped looking up and buried her head on his shoulder. Through his shirt he felt drops of water falling from her eyes.

"Do you still have the dreams?" he asked quietly.

"Only when something triggers them," she whispered, raising her head up.

"Like tonight?" he asked. She nodded, looking up again as if she could still see the phantom of the Dark Mark in the sky.

"I didn't go to sleep." They sat in silence for a while as the night turned from black to grey. He felt her breath beside him rattling in and out. Slowly he leaned forward and kissed her cheek.

"I have to go back. My dad wanted to leave as soon as possible since all my siblings and Ron's two friends are with us." She nodded at him and watched as he stood up. He began taking slow steps back toward the tent when she went to her feet.

"Charlie," she said softly. He turned around but she was looking down and didn't say a word more. He walked back and hugged her. He felt, rather than saw, her head tilt up and meet his own in a soft kiss. She broke it just as suddenly, leaving him dizzy, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

He made himself speak to break her discomfort. "I want to see you soon. I'm going to be back from Romania again because they're hosting the tri-wizard tournament again at Hogwarts and the first task somehow involves dragons. Don't tell." She smiled, looking up at him as he stood a step back from her, his hands at her waist where they had stayed when he pulled away from the hug.

**Okay so it's kind of fluffy. I'm sorry. I should really stay away from ships of any kind, especially ones with an OC but I couldn't help myself so I sunk in a little tiny bit. Plus Charlie seemed to get such a shunted off to Romania thing… I'd like to know what you thought of the story though, whether good, bad, or indifferent, please?**


End file.
